A foot pedal is known as a conventional manipulating member which is operated by a user's foot. A foot pedal is operable in the push-in direction. A device, such as a personal computer, is designed or programmed to carry out a specified operation according to the detected push-in amount of the pedal. In the field of user interface devices for computer game applications, it has been a practice to employ foot pedals as input devices particularly for driving and flight control computer games.
A typical computer game will assign one or more different inputs to a corresponding action within the game. As computer games become more involved and complex, more inputs are required to control the actions within the game. Often players must rely on their keyboards and inconvenient or awkward key layouts to provide the necessary inputs. The repetitive nature of key inputs required by video games amplifies the discomfort experienced from using key layouts not adjusted for the hand ergonomics of an individual game player. Further, it is often not intuitive for a game player to press a key in order to effect game actions, for example, to rotate a virtual soldier surveying a battlefield or to cause a virtual plane to turn in flight.
The use of prior art foot devices has alleviated some of these problems. However, a drawback of the conventional foot pedal is the fact that the foot pedal has only one degree of freedom, namely in the push-in direction. This limits the number of inputs that the foot pedal can generate to control the actions of a computer game and a player using the foot pedal remains largely dependent on a computer keyboard or joystick.
There are foot control devices in the art which expand the functionality of conventional foot controllers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,407 discloses a foot pedal which produces three inputs. The pedal generates input based on forward and backward movement in a horizontal plane, pivotal movement and rotational movement around a vertical axis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,552,807 discloses a foot pedal assembly with two pedals. The assembly generates three inputs for a computer based on independent pivoting of the pedals and the relative position of the pedals in a horizontal plane.
The above mentioned patents fail to provide an intuitive control interface for a user whereby the user can generate input for a computer by effecting roll, yaw and pitch rotation on a single device.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved tri-axis foot controller device.